Pelosi's list: Who's on her bad side?

As a young political protégé of her father, Baltimore Mayor Tommy D’Alesandro, the preteen speaker-to-be would spend hours leafing through the list of voters her father had helped in some way — fixing a pothole, finding them a job, even getting them a hot meal.

Story Continued Below

It was known as the “favor file.”

Those around Pelosi say she has always kept her own favor file. But, like her father, she has also maintained a “disfavor file” in her head — a roster of those whom she believes have screwed up, betrayed her, challenged her or merely annoyed her.

In some cases, Pelosi has mended fences with people on the list, most notably House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), a former party rival who has become an indispensable lieutenant.

But she has also moved to strip power from longtime adversaries — and she has a propensity for remembering slights and grievances for years.

Hawkish Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who clashed with Pelosi on Iraq and intelligence policy, assumed she was in line to become chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee when the Democrats seized control of the House in 2006. But Pelosi refused to appoint Harman to even a seat on the committee, and she handed the chairmanship to Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas).

As speaker, she did nothing to stop her ally Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) from ousting Rep. John Dingell as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee after clashing with the octogenarian Michigan Democrat on energy policy and global warming.

See also

The list, Pelosi allies say, is real — even as they warn that overstating her vindictiveness feeds into the right-wing caricatures of Pelosi and perpetuates ethnic and gender stereotypes.

Moreover, they argue that portraying her as payback-obsessed misses a fundamental political point: Despite her commanding majority, Pelosi is painfully aware that powerful speakers, including Republican Joe Cannon, have been toppled for using their power heavy-handedly.

“She’s not a vengeful person, per se, and she thinks that people who do bad things eventually get their due without her intervention,” a longtime associate said on condition of anonymity.

“But that doesn’t mean she forgets.”

So who’s on Pelosi’s list now?

1. Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.). No Democrat has done quite so much in so short a time to arouse Pelosi’s disdain as the failed-Redskins-quarterback-turned-ambitious-North-Carolina-congressman.

The conservative, anti-abortion Shuler would have made the list for voting against both bank bailout bills and the stimulus package, but the way he went about it didn’t help; Shuler told an audience back home that “House leadership and Senate leadership have really failed” on the $787 billion package.

The thing that riles Pelosi most, according to several House aides, is that she believes Shuler’s motives are as much political as they are ideological — and that he’s picking a fight with her to position himself for a run against Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) next year.

Unless Shuler is planning a long House career, picking a fight with Pelosi may indeed have its advantages: His 2006 opponent, incumbent GOP Rep. Charles Taylor, scored points by portraying Shuler as a Pelosi acolyte.

“I don’t know if Shuler is talking without thinking or if he’s just making the calculation that distancing himself from Pelosi is never a bad thing to do,” said a senior House leadership aide.

2. Rush Limbaugh. He’s Pelosi’s sworn enemy — and she views him as beneath contempt and unworthy of her comment.

Asked about the right-wing talk-radio king the other day, Pelosi said: “I don’t speak to that. I’m the speaker of the House. I don’t get into the popular culture.”